The Big Questions, Part One: The Building No One Built

I've been reading randomly from two very different books: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The Evidential Power of Beauty by Thomas Dubay.

They are as alike as a granite boulder and a piece of cheese. One looks at life in the universe as happening purely by chance (no God, no supernatural presence whatsoever), and the other sees God present all the while, supercharging every proton and particle that is, peering like a lover through the lattices of all things created. (Can you guess which book I'm diggin'?).

Look at a building. Think of its foundation, the complexity of its structure, the electrical system, the plumbing, all of these parts working in harmony to provide shelter and comfort for people. You could conceivably live and breathe and move about in this building your whole life and not once find any trace of the architect. Perhaps you might see his likeness on a wall, a painting of him from the early days of the building's history. Maybe there are those in the building who remember hearing stories of how he once visited the place and walked around the halls and even took the elevator once or twice when the place was still new. But none of it can be "proven" now, seemingly. You'd have to go on faith and trust that the Man made the place, even if it just shouts of a designer from every delicate curve and arch, from the lighting to the fountain in the lobby, to the care put into each office, each room, each resting place.

If you've never seen the Man who made it, would you conclude that the building had no maker? Would you conclude that particles of steel and iron and glass must have randomly coalesced over the years and happened to form by chance this magnificent structure, with its indoor plumbing, electricity, spa and fine cafeteria? It's only logical to admit, in the midst of such design, a designer.

This admittance, like it or not, will take us into a number of other places, actually face to face with what St. Augustine called the two greatest questions we can ask our whole lives long and never get to the bottom of. They are:

1. Who am I?

2. God, Who are You?

Now because each of these questions is about a person and not a thing, each question is like a bottomless well or an infinite sky. "Who am I?" is a question we can never fully answer.

See, we can't spread a person's parts out on the floor and say, "Oh, I get it!" (Besides, that would be nasty. Wordsworth comes to mind: "We murder to dissect.") We can take apart a thing, like a lawn mower or a vacuum cleaner and spread it out and say "OK, I see how it works." But we can't do this with persons. What makes a person a person is intangible; can't bruise it, can't lose it, slice it or dice it. It is outside the bounds of space and time. Is it spirit? Is it inside us? Are we inside of it? Oops, we are talking space again, but the category does not apply. It's you! Do you even know yourself yet? That's the human journey.